


War - As Told By A (Slightly Incompetent) Angel and Demon

by Phoenix_Rose



Series: History - As Described By a (Slightly Incompetent) Angel and Demon [6]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale and Crowley are godparents, Aziraphale talks about angels, Crowley talks about Demons, Heaven vs Hell, M/M, The Them are curious, War, lil' angstier than usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 06:49:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19436140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenix_Rose/pseuds/Phoenix_Rose
Summary: Aziraphale shot Crowley a sharp look.Oh, thank you,it said.You’ve really dropped me in it, now.





	War - As Told By A (Slightly Incompetent) Angel and Demon

**Author's Note:**

> Edited 13/07/19 to include linked footnotes

“So,” said Mrs Young, looking between Aziraphale and Crowley and seeming slightly awkward, the way a person[1] trying desperately to make small talk often does. “How long have you been together?”

Aziraphale shot Crowley a look that said, _you can field that one, if you please, my dear,_ and took a sip of his tea.

“Well,” he said, putting down his tea and lounging a little more, striking a pose like he was thinking hard. “We’ve been with each other since the beginning of time, but we’ve only been... ‘snogging’ for the last three weeks of it.”

Mr and Mrs Young choked politely on their tea. Aziraphale narrowly avoided this by virtue of being an angel and therefore being able to miracle the tea out of his airway. His cheeks flushed a bright, apple-red and Crowley smirked at him, flicking his tongue out at him. “Well, then,” he said quickly, placing his tea down, “how about we go and see Adam, my dear?”

Crowley grinned, “Great idea, Angel.” He was already out the door as Aziraphale thanked Mr and Mrs Young for the tea and said goodbye for both of them.

Adam sat in his makeshift throne, Dog sat in his lap, as the rest of the Them did their own thing around them. He watched them almost lazily, basking in the sunshine, too content to bother standing.

Dog leapt off him as he smelled the approach of an angel and a demon; Adam looked up and grinned. “Uncle Crowley! Uncle Zira!” He jumped to his feet and waved. Brian, Pepper, and Wensleydale looked up and waved, too.

Aziraphale looked questioningly at Crowley. “Uncle?”

“I know you know what uncles are, Angel.” Crowley waved back at Adam as they came just within earshot.

“Yes, but neither of us have siblings.” He frowned, “Do you?”

Crowley looked at him over the top of his glasses, “No, Angel. Sometimes humans just call their godparents uncle. Especially if they’re close to them.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. He thought a moment on this and then gave a little smile. Uncle Zira. He quite liked that.

Both he and Crowley startled when Dog started yapping at their ankles. The Them chuckled a little as they took a few matching steps backwards.

“Here, boy!” Adam called. Dog obediently returned to his side and he looked at his godparents. “You don’t have to be scared of him. He’s not gonna hurt you.”

“Perhaps not,” Aziraphale said stiffly, “but he _is_ a hellhound. And hellhounds…” He trailed off with a little shudder. He’d never got on well with hellhounds. They tended to regard him as a particularly tasty looking chew toy.

“Right,” Crowley said, dropping down onto the forest floor and patting the ground next to him. Aziraphale hesitated a moment before sitting next to him, figuring any mess could be easily miracled away. “How’ve you been? Keeping in trouble?”

“Keeping _out_ of trouble?” Aziraphale corrected hastily.

The Them exchanged glances, smirking slightly. Adam, always the spokesman, shrugged at them. “We’ve been good.”

Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged glances and fond smiles. 

Aziraphale had never really got on particularly well with children before. Excluding Warlock, that was, though he’d purposely let Crowley spend more time with him, being the nanny. Babies, sure, he could work with. His angelic presence calmed with. But children… No. They were Crowley’s territory. [2]

That being said, the Them were quite easy to get along with, and Wensleydale, particularly, Aziraphale could understand. His love for books and knowledge… Yes, he could understand that. However, he rather regretted making such an effort to indulge his thirst when he looked up from his book and asked, “Mr Aziraphale?”

He looked over from where he’d been watching Adam and Pepper show Crowley their best dirty fighting moves for use against the Johnsonites. “Yes, my dear?”

“This book keeps calling angels the Heavenly Host. Isn’t a host an army?”

Aziraphale swallowed. Crowley, too, seemed to go rigid at the question, looking over. Adam, Pepper and Brian sensed the sudden tension lying thickly in the air, abandoning their games to come sit and listen. The six of them in a circle, waiting for Aziraphale to speak. “Yes. Well…” He sighed, “Yes, it does, dear.”

Wensleydale frowned. Adam squinted in thought. But it was Pepper, sweet, peace-loving Pepper, the child who’d faced War and won, who asked derisively, “So, you were a soldier?”

“I- Yes.” Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Yes. I was created as a Cherub with a flaming sword in order to serve as a soldier for the Almighty. I… I fought- That is I, ah, went into battle against the, the Adversary and his armies.” He smiled weakly at them.

“You mean demons?” Adam asked, looking discreetly at Crowley.

“Actually,” Wensleydale said, looking seriously at them, [3] "I don’t think they were demons yet. They were just Fallen Angels.”

“Quite right,” Aziraphale said. “Quite right. We didn’t call them demons, yet. Did you… Did you call yourself demons, yet, dear?”

Crowley frowned, struggling to remember the war fought so long ago. “No-o,” he said doubtfully, drawing it out as he thought. “No,” he said a little more certain. “We didn’t change any names until we finished Falling, ‘til we were in Hell. I think we still had our angelic names during the war.”

“So you were a soldier as well?” Adam asked him. The Them looked at the angel and demon as if seeing them in a new light. It was strange, really, Aziraphale thought, that none of them had realised that they _must_ have fought in the war. Unless, of course, they thought they’d been Created for Earth - that was always a possibility. [4]

“Yes, but only a foot soldier. Nowhere near as high up as Aziraphale was.”

Aziraphale shot Crowley a sharp look. _Oh, thank you,_ it said. _You’ve really dropped me in it, now._ Crowley smiled faux-innocently at him. “I wasn’t _that_ high up,” Aziraphale tried to insist. “Not like some of the Cherubim. I only had a small group of angels under my command, you see? We were only there to defend the gates as best we could. We weren’t...” He trailed off and shook his head. “We were the luckier ones. We only lost… I mean, only a few…” He cleared his throat and blinked rapidly, looking up for a moment.

Crowley, noticing immediately that he was struggling, grabbed his hand and started speaking. “I stayed near the back as much as I could. Didn’t see much action, ‘til I’d managed to saunter down to Hell. Didn’t go near the gates, either.”

Pepper remained unimpressed. “But you must have known the Fallen Angels,” she insisted. “How could you lead an army against them?”

“How could I not?” Aziraphale shot back, his temper flaring for a moment. He took a breath as Crowley squeezed his hand tightly. “Apologies, my dear girl. It’s just…” He sighed a moment, thinking. “Since my Creation - which was only a little after the Rebellion began, if I remember correctly, though there’s a good chance I don’t - I knew my purpose, set by the Almighty. And that purpose was to protect. After the war, it’d be to protect Eden, but at the moment it was to protect the Good - Heaven - from the Bad - which was the Fallen. I’d never known anything other than that, so when they put the sword in my hand…”

“No one blames you, Angel,” Crowley insisted, shooting warning looks at the Them, daring them to contradict him. [5]

“You should,” he said simply. “The children are quite right to. I could have resisted. Instead…” He shrugged and looked at Wensleydale, slipping into what Crowley sometimes called his lecturer’s voice. “If you’re interested in angels…”

Wensleydale nodded, though after the conversation he’d caused he was a little wary. Aziraphale smiled at him.

“When the original dissenters Fell, we forgot them.”

“Forgot?” Adam frowned, “How can you just… forget someone like that?”

“With divine intervention,” Aziraphale said wryly. “We could remember… We’d know that we’d sung hymns with so-and-so, but we wouldn’t know their name, or what they looked like. Just a vague feeling. Nothing about what they were like. So when they said, ‘The Fallen are awful and Bad’, we believed them, and...” He shrugged almost negligently like he hadn’t thought of it a thousand times before. [6]

“We forgot them, too,” Crowley said. “Forgot a lot of thingsss. What it’sss like Up There… Our own angelic namesss… Couldn’t sssense love anymore, either.”

“I could make you remember again,” Adam said. Offered.

Aziraphale paled a little, thinking of nameless demons who’d fallen at the other end of his sword. [7] Crowley shook his head rapidly; he knew, now, what Heaven was like. He had no desire to know how it had treated him. After a moment, Aziraphale came back to himself. “My dear boy,” he said slowly. “Some things are better left forgotten.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1 Especially a British person. [return to text]
> 
> 2 That wasn’t just because of their chaotic energy. Crowley just liked children. [return to text]
> 
> 3 Aziraphale was suddenly grateful that Wensleydale wore glasses. Without the buffer, that piercing gaze would have looked straight through him. [return to text]
> 
> 4 They hadn’t thought this. They’d just looked at Aziraphale and Crowley, who’d worked with all their might to prevent a war between Heaven and Hell and concluded that it was impossible that they’d fight. [return to text]
> 
> 5 They didn’t. Crowley had never shot them warning looks before; they took them very seriously. [return to text]
> 
> 6 He’d thought of it a lot after realising that by giving the humans his flaming sword - even with his good intentions - he’d started off war. And War, for that matter. Being responsible for that, as well as the deaths of however many Fallen Angels... One had to wonder… Was he somehow… wrong inside? Somehow… tainted by the things he’d done, on purpose or by accident? Perhaps everything he touched would be spoiled by violence. Perhaps he was just as Bad as them... [return to text]
> 
> 7 What if they’d been his friends? His family? [return to text]


End file.
